This weekend, the country witnessed its second national cleaning exercise. Slated for Saturday from 7am to 10am, citizens are required to go out and clean their communities.
The mandatory three-hour exercise, announced last month, will be observed on the last Saturday of every month because about 75 percent of diseases in the country are spread as a result of poor sanitation and hygiene.
However, the well-intentioned exercise, which was received well by Ugandans, as seen from the number of people who came out to participate, was not without incident.
Several days after the exercise ended, massive piles of garbage were still visible across several urban areas. The authorities in these areas seem ill-prepared and overwhelmed.
Then there was the chaos in the implementation of the exercise, including whether Seventh Day Adventists would be exempt from the exercise, and police officers stopping anyone found moving, including travellers transiting through Uganda and patients going to hospital.
We are glad that there seems to have been a lot of preparation going into the second exercise. Police this week issued guidelines for national cleaning day activities.
Police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke says patients and those with scheduled medical appointments will be exempted from participating in the exercise.
Also, medical personnel, emergency service vehicles, cross-border vehicles such as buses travelling to or from neighbouring countries, foreign tourists and journalists will also be exempted.
Our appeal goes to authorities in the urban centres to handle the collected garbage better. Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) took the lead by procuring private waste collection companies to make sure the tonnage of garbage collected during the national cleaning day and on other days is properly collected.
We appeal to all the other authorities, right from the parishes, to ensure the rubbish collection points are well demarcated and collected at the end of the exercise.
We also appeal to corporate entities to donate trucks that can be used to collect rubbish every cleaning weekend. Some partners stepped up in the previous exercise, and we urge even more to come forward in the subsequent exercise.
Finally, locals should not contract diseases during the cleaning exercise. We appeal to everyone to get proper cleaning gear and also use safety tools such as gloves and masks, or improvise where necessary. More importantly, clean yourself well after the exercise with clean water and soap.
